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“It makes the water come to my mouth when I think of the State of Cuba as one in our family.”

— 1895 An American politician & financier

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“Cuba remained hostage to the United States, while U.S. companies and investors took control of the major sectors of Cuba’s economy. By 1905, 60% of Cuba’s rural land was owned by U.S. citizens or companies. U.S. investors also controlled 90% of Cuba’s tobacco trade, the country’s iron, copper, and nickel mines, its railroads, and its electricity and telephone systems.” — Historian & Author Aviva Chomsky

So, as we are wont to do, we occupied a nation & called it “freedom.”

We hijacked Cuba’s postal service and customs, in order to control what came and went, and make sure anything valuable found its way into our own government coffers.

Perching high up in a tree in the woods, dry leaves swirling around me like confetti. The branches form an uncomfortable V around my butt, but this particular perch gives an incredible panoramic view of the forest.

Photo: Sylver Blaque

I love writing & watching wildlife from up here – for as long as my butt can take it!

No wildlife-watching today, however. Have the goobies with me. 🙂

Mally‘s jumping around & up in the air, trying to catch swirling leaves. But MegaDeath is yowling back at the wind, as if to say, “Yes, Mother Nature, I hear you. Now hear THIS!”

Nope, no wildlife-watching with the goobies around! 🙄

Photo: Sylver Blaque / Mally & MegaDeath

Have 2 other foster-goobies this week: Apache & Soldier. They’re twins (well, 2 of sextups, actually), the only survivors of a murderous ex-owner who killed their siblings, one by one.

“Let’s abandon the fundamentally frothy question of who is wearing a ring. Young men need jobs so they can pay child support and contribute more meaningfully to the households they are living in. The real menace to America’s children is not single mothers, or unmarried or gay parents, but an economy that stokes an unconscionable divide between the rich and the not rich.”

And from the reactions of other foreigners to our 9/11 tragedy. I mean, I just always assumed that everyone everywhere felt the way we Americans do about it.

I guess I’m learning the value in seeing how others see you.

Because, the truth is, you can never really see yourself objectively.

Yet, even this awakening I’m experiencing here – this dirty view of us through foreign eyes – only makes me feel more determined to fight to right the wrongs. I mean, you have to fight for what you love. And I love my country. In spite of everything I’m learning, that will never change. It’s like how I love my family; no matter what they do, they’re still my blood & always will be. And you don’t give up on family. If they’re broken, you fight for them, fight to fix them, fight to save them.

I told Karli & Dana tonight about the Israeli airport encounter, and they didn’t seem surprised. Karli told me about similar 9/11 conversations she’s had with foreigners in other countries. Dana’s view is that those foreigners are just jealous of America. But Karli thinks, as I do, that it has a lot more to do with our foreign policy, the things we’ve done and continue to do to other countries.

Why do we need all that honey? And why are we so okay with spilling their blood to get it? According to those Israelis, spilling foreign blood means our blood will follow. Are generations of our blood worth spilling for honey?

And who has time to dig, anyway? We have jobs, families, a social life.

But even when we do find out horrendous stuff about our country, patriotism (or the fear of being called unpatriotic) propels us to justify our atrocities. Or we retreat into denial. Or defensiveness. Like in the museo today, when the Whites in our group became so defensive about American benevolence, even in the face of our racist destruction of a Brown nation.

Remember how, in high school, when you thought you were the only girl in the world for some undercover asshole, he’d do something assholey that would dent your developing ego and piss you the hell off?

What did you do about it?

Some girls ranted & raged. Others curled up & cried. And then there were the ones who grabbed the nearest object & hurled it right at assholey’s head (or other parts).

Well, that was me.

Except I always grabbed words & regurgitated them all over assholey’s psyche.

I became high-school famous for this.

As one of the popular girls (social stratification in high school is unavoidable 🙄 ) it wasn’t expected that I’d put embarrassing feelings right out in the open like that. But I did. And doing so encouraged other girls in school to do it, too.

We victims of assholey-ness started a writing club, and anytime boyfriends assholey-ed us, we’d commandeer the gym or outdoor field in the middle of sports practice, and regurgitate our stories, poems, song lyrics, etc. all over the jock’s psyches. Continue reading →

It’s in my hair, on my shoulders, splattered across the back of my neck, and God knows where else.

.

WHY

We’re rescuing a colony of bats that got trapped in someone’s attic, and pooping is an animal’s fight or flight response to being captured.

But guess what?

It’s part of our fight or flight response, as well.

It’s why sometimes people get so scared they pee on themselves. Like my coworker just did because he’s never seen so many bats in person. I won’t talk about how hilarious it was to see his reaction when they all started flying around, grazing his head.

In hindsight, I think those Israelis were trying to communicate with us in a direct way which agitated our American play-nice sensibilities. We Americans rarely express anything that directly, so we were pissed off by the Israelis’ bluntness. We’re used to p.c. phrasing accompanied by smiles & all kinds of other make-niceties that many foreign cultures just don’t engage in.

So, we definitely do not see ourselves as “tyrants.”

When we look into our national mirror, we see the good guys. We see ourselves as the victim of tyrants. When we war, we’re only fighting back.

His face darkened, his body language was confrontational, and I’m pretty sure his aura was a deadly shade of black & blue…

Another of the Israelis chimed in calmly, as if nothing was amiss, nobody’s American blood was boiling, no Israeli was about to get his teeth smashed in. Just a friendly group of travelers, shooting the international sh*t.

“When you crash a bee’s nest, and destroy the bees to get to their honey,” this Israeli began patiently. “Those bees will fill with hatred for you. They will buzz to their children the stories of how you demolished their homes, their families, their lives, their country. And those children will come. They will come to avenge their ancestors. Generation after generation. Because you continue to crash their nests.”

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About Me

Hi, I'm Sylver.
Writer, documentarist, world travel gypsy, and animal-lover. I blog about culture - our own & others around the globe. Via news, music, stories, time-travel & more, we'll venture into foreign minds to discover what it is, exactly, that makes each of us believe WE are the 'normal' ones.
Travel with me, won't you? It's quite a ride!

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